A thinkers blog

Open Innovation

For the first time I have come across the concept of Open Innovation while reading the interview of Henry Chesbrough. I must say the concept is quite intuitive as instead of supporting manufacturing over services or visa versa Henry is propagating adoption of services by the manufacturing sector to come out of the commodity trap. The increased flow of knowledge has reduced the product life cycles thereby increased threat of commoditization of the products. He advocates that companies should tear down the wall of it's R&D and ask the question, 'How can I make my product a platform?'. Platform is a place where others can build along or on top i.e. to continuously think how my product can help others to provide their product or services on top of my product or along with my product. He quotes an example of iStore which created the platform for thousands of app developers.
I am quite sure that this concept will catch on sooner than expected. Here is the link - http://www.strategy-business.com/article/11210?pg=all

Life and Career evaluation questions

One of the major changes post-crisis has been in evaluating the life and career options. HBS Professor Clay Christensen (Author of Innovator's Dilemma and Seeing What's Next) was asked to address this question to the class of 2010. Instead of providing for straight answers, he asked the class to find cogent answers to three questions -
1) How can I be sure that I will be happy in my career?
2) How can I be sure that I will find the enduring source of happiness in relationship with my family?
3) How can I be sure to stay out of jail (i.e. lead a life of integrity).

He does offer his answers and methods that he applied to find these answers. For the first question the author allocated one hour every day from his extremely busy schedule (while studying) to think about the purpose of his life. For the second, he kept reminding himself of taking decisions for the long term i.e. investing time in building relationship. For the third question, he has very accurately summed up in one sentence - it is easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than to hold 98% of the time.
One last advice he offers is to choose the right yardstick to measure the success in life. He measures his by the number of people he has positively impacted.

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Emotional Intelligence and Leadership

It is always refreshing to re-read some classics and in business writings Daniel Goleman's original article on What Makes a Leader in HBR is one of the such articles. It was originally published in 1998 and still demands compulsory reading for anyone looking forward to becoming a leader or recruiting one. The author, based on extensive research, points out that the old model of IQ and technical skills heavy requirement of leadership is now replaced with Emotional Intelligence (EI) heavy model where EI has become twice as more important than IQ and technical skills.
In my experience most of the people are aware of the term EI but associate it mostly with empathy or friendliness. Whereas, Daniel has listed five skill sets that combined makes for EI. Three of skills are related with self: self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation and two are related with others: empathy and social skills.
In my opinion very rightly self-awareness and self-regulation have occupied the slot number one and two respectively but I doubt if they have received the corresponding importance by the hopeful leaders or leadership assessors.
Another very important point that the author brings out is the key characteristics of motivation, as he emphasizes that motivation based on external factors such as salary or status is not what makes effective leaders but in contrast motivation by deeply embedded desire to seek learning and challenges are required for effective leadership.
Empathy is probably well understood, at least intellectually. However, social skills are most often mistaken only for large number of acquaintances. Whereas, according to the author social skill is friendliness with purpose which includes moving people in the direction you desire. And for this one has to be aware of the self, coming to full circle.

Presentation skills

There are many books on presentation skills focusing mainly on the style. Bill Lane, Jack Welch's speechwriter, focused mainly on the substance in his book Jacked Up. He elucidates the importance of presentations in internal communications (whereas, most of the other books are directed towards external communication) of any company. He describes in detail how Jack Welch used this effective tool in changing the internal language of the behemoth GE. Some of the valuable tips apart from the usual ones of being short, prepare thoroughly, do not be a figurehead, tape your presentation - rehearse, should not be boring, use effective anecdotes, are - 

not to convey the impression that you are speaking to an unimportant audience,

appearing nervous is fine as it conveys that you care, 

never make somebody else's presentation, 

you are being judged every moment by everyone in the room, 

season a success story with where you came up short, 

first draft of presentation must be yours, 

when you blow your success devote only a minute and rest nine minutes in explaining why that success occurred, 

and the best of all is - TOTAL CANDOR 'stop bullshitting or get off the stage'. 

I personally loved the last one as now days many presentations are only about blowing own horns and rampant misrepresentation of the facts in the guise of clever talking - 'candor' is usually thrown out of the window. This behavior, if not checked or simply ignored by the decision makers in the room, has the potential of long-term destructive effects in any company. 

At some point Jack Welch filtered the big meetings presentation to following five charts, which are quite useful for any big presentation -

1. Description of your world markets;

2. Moves by competitors over the past three years;

3. Your moves over the past three years;

4. Competitors' moves over the coming two years; and

5. Your plan to counter or leapfrog them over the coming two years.

Story

I was discussing with one of the consultants regarding advertisement strategy of our products - hows and whats. In a consultants usual lingo there are many complexities involved in formulating the advertisement strategy. However, simply put advertisement is just another form of a 'story' around the object. And the ingredients of any good 'story' - characters with whom one can relate, mystery to trigger the imagination, anticipation, surprise element, and a satisfying climax - are precisely the requirements of any advertisement.

I think in most of the life and business situations 'stories' play one of the most important roles and the difference between two competing players is made by their story-telling skill. We are probably born with this skill, as I observe in most of the kids, but over the period of time due to lack of formal attention many tend to loose this pivotal skill.

Strategy and Execution

Summer of 2009 is behind us and now it is time for businesses to plan for the next year. This is the time when most of the management time is invested in formulating strategies, both short-term and long-term. All levels of the management are active during these sessions to contribute in the process. I have found that many times people get lost when some words such as 'vision', 'strategy', 'execution' and the likes are used in such brainstorming sessions, due to which the businesses may be devoid of some good ideas that may come from unexpected lower level source.

Simply put, one starts with 'target/s' (aka vision / goal / objectives). Decides what to do (aka strategy) to achieve the target. And then during the given time frame gets it done (aka execution).

My friend 'targeted' to spend his summer vacations in Spain. He (along with his wife) decided the airline, hotel, daily care for their pet dog during their absence, and back up arrangement in their respective offices - thus, formulated the 'strategies'. They did as they planned and also adjusted in between the vacation due to an unexpected call from one of the dear ones - thus, they executed the strategy and also adjusted mid-course based on the situational demand. 

In my experience such simple examples strikes a cord with most of the people, which increases their participation which in turn increases the inputs (badly needed by any business).

An Excellent Tool for All

Recently I was referred to a service named as Evernote, which is a great service to save emails, receipts, web clippings, and pictures. One can click picture of business cards and transfer it to 'Evernote', which in turn will recognize the text on it. Its compatibility with mobile phones will make utilization limited only by imagination. Some of the excellent tips for its use are offered by Guy Kawasaki and Jennifer Van Grove. 

Thick Face, Black Heart

One basic premise that runs through most of the self-help books is the Western philosophy of 'law of attraction'. I am not against this philosophy but it seems incomplete to me as I believe that certain principles need to be followed for law of attraction to work and there is a limit to the power of thought beyond which one has to surrender. I do not fully believe in the Eastern philosophy either, which places excessive importance on pre-determined destiny. I believe that one can find some answers in the Eastern philosophy and some in the Western philosophy. A blended philosophy might be a better idea and that is what the author Chin-Ning Chu has tried to achieve in her book Think Face, Black Heart. She has not over emphasized the role of destiny or power of thought, but placed an equal importance to both.

Beginning of the book is quite provocative as author suggest 'winning at all costs' and harboring of 'negative thoughts'. But once I was through first three or four chapters the bigger picture started to become clearer, and by the time I was finishing the book it was clear to me that this book warrants another reading within a week.  

Height and Taxation

A Case Study of Utilitarian Income Redistribution, by Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw, Weinzierl proposes the optimal taxation on height. The idea of taxation based on the height of a person instead of the income is so ludicrous that is should be ignored without any further waste of time. But if the case study is conducted by an economists of Harvard, it warrants a reading.

The main framework economists use to think through tax policy supposes that when a government needs to raise tax revenue, it wants to spread the burden of taxes among its citizens in the least painful way, Weinzierl says. In other words, the government wants those for whom it is relatively easy to earn money to pay more in taxes than those for whom it is difficult.

"The problem is this: The government can't tell whether it is easy or hard for a given person to earn income, because it can't measure 'ability.' What the government can measure is income, so it tends to tax income. But when the government taxes incomes, it discourages people from working as hard as they otherwise would have worked.

"The holy grail of tax policy, according to this framework, is a fixed and observable measure of ability," Weinzierl continues. "That is where height comes in. It turns out that each inch of height is associated with about a 2 percent higher wage among white males in the United States. Wage is one measure of ability, since it measures how much someone can earn in an hour of work. Therefore, if height is taxed, you are taxing ability directly, so you can cut the economic pie more equally without it shrinking."

Intuitively I do not agree with the above logic. However, it is evident that to measure 'the ability to earn' is not an easy task. And use of any proxy such as the income or the education level can only lead to a trade off where more equally a government tries to slice the economic pie, the smaller it will get. 

It makes me ponder if a way to measure the 'ability' will make it easier for the companies to recruit people.

Employees and Recognition

When it comes to the praise and recognition, managers and their reports have two different opinions, as the former feels ample is being provided and the latter thinks it is absent. Any manager runs a risk of demotivating their employees by not showering enough praises. At the same time the question which we ask ourselves as a manager is, if it is possible to praise excessively and run a risk of sub-optimal performance. Usual answer to such questions lies in finding the right balance. According to Gallup data, the key to effective recognition is that it be honest and based on outcomes that are measurable. They suggest that once every seven days is optimum.

“Once every seven days, all employees should be individually recognized or at least told that they have done a good job or that they have set a record. And you can never give too much recognition if it is honest and deserved.” - Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter, 12: The Elements of Great Managing

This is probably a good way to monitor that we do not miss on this crucial aspect. However, I am not convinced that the answer lies in the 'number of times'. I believe what counts is authenticity. A veracious praise once a month is more effective than four ritualistic praises. To implement this, a leader has to be genuinely interested in his/her people and be an intent observer to catch them doing the right things.